Mumbai: Eleven students from Maharashtra have secured a perfect 100 percentile in the first attempt of the MHT-CET PCB examination conducted for admission to pharmacy and agriculture courses, the State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell announced on Tuesday.Among the high scorers are Ashley Fernandes from Mumbai city and Saurish Sen from Thane. All 11 students who achieved a 100 percentile score are from Maharashtra; no candidate from outside the state figured among the top scorers.The first attempt of the examination was conducted between April 21 and April 26 across 11 sessions. Held in a computer-based format at 186 centres across 36 districts, the test drew 2.6 lakh candidates out of the 2.8 lakh who had registered.Analysis from the state CET Cell shows that the percentile distribution also reflects a marginal contraction at the upper end of the score spectrum. The number of students scoring between 90 and 99.99 percentile dropped from 28,929 in 2025 to 26,910 this year, while those in the 80–89.99 percentile range declined from 29,482 to 27,294. Similar reductions were recorded across the 70–79.99, 60–69.99 and 50–59.99 percentile bands.Girls continued to dominate participation in the PCB stream. Of those who appeared, 1.6 lakh were female candidates, compared with 1,03,360 male candidates, while five transgender candidates also took the examination. The overwhelming majority of candidates, 2.6 lakh were from Maharashtra, while 1,991 came from outside the state.This year also saw a slight decline in the number of perfect scorers. While 14 students achieved a 100 percentile in 2025, the number fell to 11 in 2026.The students who secured a 100 percentile are Aditya Somani (Nagpur), Jheel Chheda (Palghar), Ashley Fernandes (Mumbai City), Atharva Gadde (Kolhapur), Pratiksha Gadhve (Solapur), Atharva Kakulde (Dhule), Sarthak Patil (Sangli), Sahim Patvegar (Kolhapur), Rashi Chopra (Pune), Saurish Sen (Thane) and Varad Vaidya (Pune).
